Have you ever thought about the tools required to run an Oracle database? To be specific, Free tools! Database vendors heavily promote their “tools” and “services” which includes some of the most expensive products on the market — not that these are bad. Any businesses that are investing in an enterprise level database platform are ensuring future growth. That being said, this article is geared towards smaller businesses that are just getting started with Oracle. From my perspective, there are free tools that accomplish the same things as the paid versions.
The Oracle Database is one of the most widely used Database management systems in the world. Improving your Oracle databases performance can provide significant benefits to both direct and indirect costs. There are many techniques for improving an Oracle Database but in this article I will show you some freely available tools which can help you improve your database today.
SOLARWINDS DATABASE PERFORMANCE ANALYZER (FREE TRIAL)
SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is a high-level cross-platform tool to help database administrators and MSPs closely monitor the performance of their most important Oracle-based databases. At its core, you can pull up the real-time status of your database or quickly toggle to your historical metrics from the past.
The backend of the monitoring system collects data down to the nearest second and leverages anomaly detection to bring potentially problematic activity to your attention before it causes any downtime. Anomaly detection is designed to work even better over time as it learns the normal ranges and average response times of your different databases.
Wait-time analysis works in conjunction with anomaly detection to help you visualize specific elements of your Oracle database that may need your attention. SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer focuses on query and table optimization to help improve and maintain ideal response time. This includes built-in tuning advisors to help guide you towards corrective action for the problems that it detects. The tuning advisor helps highlight indexing opportunities, inefficient query structures, and further optimizations based on how your users are querying for data.
Under the Performance tab, you can sort both and monitor the metrics for your database server, as well as the database itself. You can sort key data by the highest wait time, upward wait time trends, and physical resource utilization through an intuitive reporting feature. SolarWinds DPA puts you in a proactive state, so you can focus more on optimizations, and less on putting out fires.
If you need 100% uptime for your Oracle databases in your business, SolarWinds DPA has the tools and proactive monitoring features you need to keep things running smoothly. Licensing is available as both a monthly subscription as well as a perpetual license. You can grab a free 14-day trial of SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer to try out for yourself.
DBFORGE STUDIO FOR ORACLE
dbForge Studio for Oracle from Devart is built to help Oracle developers increase their coding speed and efficiency through helpful data editing and troubleshooting tools. If you’re managing multiple Oracle servers you’ll have the ability to sync data between your systems as well as automate schema management during development.
Inside you’ll find helpful features such as IntelliSense code completion that significantly speeds up the process of writing out SQL queries or PL/SQL based code. The automatic code completion feature analyzes the block of code and suggests objects depending on its placement and context within the database.
In dbForge Studio you don’t have to search the database every time to pull the most current information on existing objects. The quick information feature allows you to access the most current properties on an object during the development process within the same coding window.
Lastly, dbForge Studio utilizes code refactoring to rename tables, views, functions, and packages in just a few clicks. Code refactoring automatically seeks out and updates all references to the newly renamed object. Keeping track of these changes can all be viewed under the Rename window.
If you’re primarily running one or more Oracle databases, dbForge Studio is a flexible tool that will help you increase your coding speed and shave time off of routine database administration. Pricing for a single one year starts at $199.95 (£162.79). You can download the express edition for free.
Datadog Oracle Monitoring (FREE TRIAL)
Datadog is a cloud-based infrastructure management system that is organized into modules Datadog Application Performance Monitor is one of those modules and it monitors a range of applications, including databases. Datadog has a large number of adaptations that add on specialist capabilities for monitoring well known applications. One of those integrations adds Oracle database monitoring to the application performance monitor.
Most of the Datadog system is resident on a cloud server, each user has an account for the service and can log in to the dashboard of the system through any standard web browser. There is an element that needs to be installed on the database’s server. This is called an agent and it collects information that it sends up to the Datadog APM system. The agent can be installed on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
The monitor shows live statuses on a range of metrics for your Oracle database instances. These include tablespace utilization, disk activity, and buffer space. Having the oracle integration installed doesn’t limit Datadog APM, it is also able to monitor other applications running on the same server.
Pros:
- Is a cloud-based service, making it a flexible and lightweight option
- Excellent graphical reports and dashboard visualizations
- Pricing is based on usage, making it a viable option for both small and large networks using Oracle
- Agent can run on multiple platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux
- Can monitor other applications, devices, or networks alongside oracle
Cons:
- Would benefit from a longer 30 day trial period
Datadog charges for the APM by subscription with a rate per host per month or by the year. There is also an App Analytics add-on available to improve the performance forecasting and planning features of the APM. You can get a 15-day free trial of Datadog APM.
REDGATE DEPLOYMENT SUITE FOR ORACLE
RedGate Deployment Suite for Oracle is a tool designed for database administration, development, and deployment.
The software can be deployed in minutes, after which you can compare database schemas and tables. The user interface displays the data as a string, so you can easily find un-synchronized data.
With the command line feature, you can automate the deployment. However, you do not need to know the code to update scripts. There is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) where you can configure and interact with deployment scripts.
Notifications let you know when the schema changes or when problems such as dependencies are detected. After receiving the alert, you can continue to investigate and view more detailed information such as the database access history…
The price of the RedGate Deployment Suite for Oracle depends on how many users you want to support. Between 1-4 users the price is 1755 USD (£1355) per user, but this is reduced to 1509 USD for 5-9 users and 1420 USD (£1096) per user for 10 users plus. You can download a 28-day free trial.
Conclusion
This article is an expansion of the collection of open source tools, which can be used to process or analyze unstructured data in Oracle Database. Developers around the world are constantly improving the capabilities of these free tools for Oracle Database. These tools can be useful in many situations, so I decided to create this special list.